Berkeley Backyard Bird Blog: Chickenscratch Musings on the Science, Art, Joy & Fate of Birds

“Do you ne’er think what wondrous beings these?”

- Longfellow

Corvid-9

Nothing beats stealing away to a favorite birding haunt in the Bay Area’s meta-urban forests, riparian areas and meadows.

The Three Roosters (I mean Sparrows)

Places where birds congregate copiously.

California Quail in fine regalia

Places where you can observe an infinite variety of amazing stealth creatures operating in their natural habitats, whether foraging, feeding, frolicking, mating, hunting, or otherwise highly engaged in some unique activity or singular behavior.

How do you know it's a Sapsucker and not a Woodpecker?

Places like that little stretch of “hidden” Wildcat Creek, or that sweet spot atop the knoll near Wildcat Peak located 1200 feet above the shores of San Francisco Bay right below.

Wildcat Creek haven for birds and wildlife

Places like the natural aviary of the Albany Bulb,

a reclaimed spit of land jutting into the Bay.

World-class view of Mount Tamalpais from Albany Bulb

Places like beyond the Berkeley / Kensington ridge in Brionesland, or the “in plain sight” yet secretive San Pablo Creek and Watershed. The other day trolling about there in idyll leisure, I spotted two unable-to-identify Warblers, along with a pair of cute Nuthatches engaged in typical pursuits with business-like behavior.

Secretive stretch of San Pablo Creek

Places “taken for granted” like Live Oak and Codornices Parks in North Berkeley, my veritable backyard, where the latter park harbors an overgrown, little traversed upper area, a perfect spot to warm up in sunny splotches of grassy wild-onion smelling splendor, spotting all manner of birds:

Vermillion Flycatcher (Big Bend National Park)

Cassin’s Vireos, Yellow and Townsend’s Warblers, Bewick's Wrens, Spotted Towhees, Wood and Hermit Thrushes, Northern Flickers, Black Phoebes, Anna's Hummingbirds, Crows, Jays and Juncos, unnamed varieties of Sparrows, Red-Tailed Hawks, and Turkey Vultures.

Benner Canyon and Falls just outside of Codornices Park in Berkeley

All so common and pedestrian –

is that what you're thinking?

Anna's Hummingbird in resplendent plumage

I love birdwatching because always, invariably during these outings, I’m confronted with the irreducible mystery of things. I'm reminded of the magnificent fact of our ignorance of a world that exists and operates right under our noses, yet is beyond our understanding and knowing, outside the purlieus of our apperception capacities.

Golden-crowned Sparrows posing sweetly

That is,

unless you stop, look and listen!

Dive-bombing Crow

By paying close attention, the world comes to your senses, influences your realm of experiential interspecies connection . . . even though, of course, birds are paying you not one whit of attention.

Dive-bombing Pelican

Not true! Birds are keen individuals, and are obviously tuned in to your presence, wouldn’t you think?

Pacific-slope Flycatcher

I love watching birds because it is an activity that challenges my conceptions of place and importance in the world, and confounds my sense of knowledge and skills owing to a seeming intractability / inability to get things right in the ID department.

Berry-munching Finch

Thus I am humbled.

Hi, Anna!

Whether it’s a futile endeavor to recognize and distinguish among highly subtle and nuanced song patterns, or a frustrating fumbling over the finer points of wing designs and parts, it seems that no matter how hard I try, I will spot a bird that I swear looks like a Warbler or a Wren, but more often than not it will remain unidentified and unidentifiable.

American Goldfinch

How can that be?

Whole bunch of shorebirds flying about at Albany Bulb

Yes, I proclaim my utter ignorance, mostly, when it comes to the finer points of field ornithology, such as identification skills, avian calls, anatomy, migration patterns, quirks and habits – in short, just about everything one needs to know about birds to make sense of them. Which is why Smithsonian editor Ted Floyd says:

A bushy little tit (that is a Bushtit)

" . . . to the novice,

it often seems more like wizardry."

Who said Pigeons were blasé and ugly?

And yet, the more time I spend birding, the more birding connects me to Nature's intimate workings – easy to pay no mind to – of the often unseen and hidden world, though busy busy busy with the comings and goings of hundreds of birds.

Feeding time on the shoreline

And the more attuned I become to my more meditative self, my more reflective being. Perhaps my inner wizard. It takes an unlearning of our normal hectic approach to life; a shedding off of our day’s mental distractions in order to focus, concentrate and attentively observe birds.

Scene at Albany Bulb

So, I go to seek them out, observe them, and wonder about them – but I don't try to really figure them out too, too much, because they're always going to be "next level".

Shoreline mudflats convo

It is plainly and simply evident that birds

operate on a higher plane,

in an occult realm.

Red-shouldered Hawk (I think)

Bird activity is of paramount importance to Earth’s ecological balance. Birds sublimely manifest and are integral to Mother Nature’s harmonic intertwining of energies in an age-old world evolved and removed from human pretense and folly. Which is why it’s so hard to pin them down.

Great Egret hunting in former dumping ground

Not that I’d ever want to actually pin one down!

Wilson's Warbler looking to dip at natural spring

As a member of a supposed paragon species – Homo sapiens – every one of us should be humbled by birds’ infinite capacities and multifarious talents. Miracles of existence, phenomenal beings, agents of highly evolved creation, adapted to every possible niche on the planet, birds are capable of performing seemingly impossible aerodynamic feats of athleticism and astounding displays of short burst and long stamina endurance.

Curious Bewick's Wren

No wonder E.E. Cummings poetically penned the sentiment: "May my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living."

Turkey poppin' up

The great part about the activity (hobby?) (pastime?) (obsession) (avocation?) (pursuit?) – is that I don't have to leave my house to enjoy birds’ joyful presence and interesting activities. From my front porch I’m able to daily take in a bonanza of birds ground feeding in the garden bursting with snapped, crackled and popped seeds, or foraging in rotting bark patches of the 108-year old Interior Live Oak tree.

Western Grebe at Albany Bulb

Just now, I look up to see a Townsend's Warbler dipping into a bush to snatch up a morsel of tasty larva. Descending on the road just now is a murder of Crows. A pair of Mourning Doves is perched on a high wire. Ms. Hummingbird comes in for a suckling sample of nectar. All right here in my urban neighborhood.

Black Phoebe mates at Tilden Nature Area

What's not to love?

Golden image of Heron in SF Bay

The real fun part about birding is you’ll never know when or where another bird will be added to your Life List of First Sightings. What bird is that that just alighted in the magnolia tree? Who are you, my tiny friend, appearing out of nowhere for a most delightful encounter.

Some real chill action on the Albany Bulb mudflats

For the life of me, I should be able to ID both of these visitors, but cannot. Turning to my field guide, I’m able to correctly conclude that the magnolia tree bird is a Mockingbird! A Mockingbird! How is it that I did not know what a Mockingbird looks like – or sounds like – a different, very mocking story entirely!

Northern Mockingbird striking a striking pose

It’s one of those inexplicable things, where you think, oh, a Mockingbird, a common ol’ Mimus polyglottos, resident of many large U.S. cities, so you surely must have seen one of the gray, lanky and long-tailed guys before. Hasn’t everyone seen a Mockingbird? Well, I hadn’t, until now, or maybe I had, but just hadn’t noticed, like with most things in life –regarding birds and many other simple, small miraculous manifestations hidden in plain sight right before us!

What is that red thingy in the general penis area of this Mockingbird?

While on the subject of Mockingbirds, who can say why are they called Mockingbirds? Seems obvious, but my brain was stumped at first. Turning to Floyd's expertise, I learn more about the phenomenal "high-fidelity mimic" Mockingbird who can:

Northern Mockingbird ground feeding

“ . . . recognizably incorporate songs

of 25+ species into seemingly endless song.”

Steller's Jay sittin' fat 'n purty

So much for common and pedestrian birds!

American Pipit pipiting

And then there's the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a regular visitor, so much so that on seeing him it barely mentions a shout-out. If. But. Well.

Congregating flock members at Albany Bulb

One of the smallest songbirds in North America, weighing just 5 to 7 grams, this precious bird landed in my front garden and poked around in underbrush for several minutes before I lost sight of him. The whole time his red crown was exposed, which is awesome because he usually chooses to keep it concealed.

(No)Ruby-crowned Kinglet

This adult male is so tiny and stubby, but inordinately beautiful. Seeing this rare creature, and so close-up, is like spotting a gold nugget in the creek and just leaving it there, admiring its intrinsic beauty, a precious, priceless thing to behold but not own or control or even know very well at all.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet paused just long enough

Then one day, right at my porch step, I look down and cannot believe my eyes. It is a dead Ruby-crowned Kinglet, ruby crown and all, lying at my feet. A few weeks later, I came across another dead Ruby-crowned Kinglet on the edge of city park. Also flashing the ruby sign of high excitement – in this case, no doubt it was an elicitation of sheer fear.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet in death's repose

Other birds I've encountered who've met a grisly untimely demise include a Varied Thrush and a Hummingbird (crashed into a store window). A friend came upon a beautiful Sharp-shinned Hawk who somehow perished on a city street in St. Louis, Missouri.

Sharp-shinned Hawk (David Brotherton)

Speculation abounds, but I will never know how the little fellas met their demise. No doubt, chances are, probably due to some "paragon species" related cause.

R.I.P. little birdie

The world is poorer and more bereft for the loss of these once-living birds, unique individuals that no one in the world will ever know about except me (until now). And for the loss of up to 1,000,000,000 – one billion! – birds a year due to anthropogenic (human-caused) sources.

Death of a Varied Thrush

Sadly, birds, though hugely adaptive and resilient, are also highly vulnerable beings. They are stalked and maimed by feral and domestic cats; they are victims of illegal hunting and trade in southeast and central Europe, where songbirds are smuggled to Malta and Italy and consumed as delicacies.

Found dead on a hiking trail.

And that's the least of the sad fate

of birds in the Anthropocene Age.

Birds die brutally en masse in wind turbine engines; and they experience painful deaths at sea and ashore from getting entangled in webs of plastic detritus; they perish horrendous deaths from ingesting plastic globules mistaken for food; and they meet their grisly fates from being poisoned by swallowing toxic rodenticides left as unintentional bait by an uncaring or ignorant "paragon species".